A few months ago I read an insightful article about how more and more job recruiters are putting a heavy emphasis on applicants’ online presence. By online presence, I am essentially referring to how active one is on the web – personal websites, blogs, published articles, activities on programming forums, etcetera. That same article detailed how recruiters hiring in technical positions would ignore applicants that while fully-qualified, lack the online presence that someone with their skills should have. If you’re a Ruby on Rails programmer, there’s no better way to show your passion for the framework by blogging about it, publishing tips and guides or simply helping others work with it. Companies will easily be able to see that, which definitely helps out during the interviewing and selection process.

While I don’t really have a personal website right now (I do own some domains, but nothing I’ve really used for that purpose) – I can attest to the success of having a strong online presence. I’ve secured 4 client gigs – just this year so far – through my various online presence points (Bryghtpath, Telegraphik, Twitter, and LinkedIn).

Owning your name – your name as your domain, that is – is critical. Ask Shel Israel how that’s been working out for him.

As a pseudo-followup to my post about establishing an online identity, I want to talk about creating your in-real-life (IRL) brand. Meeting people at business networking mixers, tech events and conferences is a lot like trying to pick up a girl at a bar. You need to sell yourself in the minute after you shake hands. Talk to anyone that frequents such networking events and they’ll tell you most people forget each others’ names immediately unless they have met before. That’s why you need to give them something to go home with – your business card. It gives people something do to after they get home be it visit your site, check out your company, email you or add you as a contact on LinkedIn/Facebook.

When we set out to create Bryghtpath LLC – we used the services of LogoWorks to create our corporate logo, letterhead, and design our business cards. It wasn’t cheap – but they did a great job helping us establish our online identity. Chris Jennings was then able to take their design concepts and create our online look & feel.

The same design can be applied to your business cards as well – as a nice real world way to extend your online presence.